


Stitches

by knowledge



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Johnlock - Freeform, Johnlock Fluff, M/M, Retirementlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-25
Updated: 2014-10-25
Packaged: 2018-02-22 14:40:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2511365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knowledge/pseuds/knowledge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock slowly learns to knit, and John slowly learns to love the carefully-laid stitches till his last breath. Johnlock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stitches

**Author's Note:**

> i don't own sherlock

Sherlock decides he needs to learn how to knit exactly three days, fourteen hours, and two minutes after he marries John Watson. His husband loves those jumpers almost as much as he loves him, so it only makes sense to learn how to knit. He’s the world’s only consulting detective; how hard can knitting be?

John wakes up at three o’clock A.M. that night. After a crisis involving fuzzy gray yarn and fire alarms is averted (“No, don’t ask,” John tells Mrs. Hudson when she barges into the room), Sherlock meekly holds up the knitting needles. John stares at them, and without a word, he drags Sherlock to the bed, pulls the mess of yarn off the needles, and promptly falls asleep.

(John always falls asleep like that now, with Sherlock’s first project pressed up against one cheek and Sherlock’s long fingers caressing the other.)

Sherlock has learned how to purl by his second try. He’s also learned the classic rhymes, and for the next day, John is listening to Sherlock muttering about Jack and front doors and back doors and bunnies and sheep. By the time he’s finished, the product looks less like a sweater and more like a too-small scrap of warped fabric. John loves it anyway.

On his thirtieth or fortieth try, Sherlock finally manages a decent, wearable sweater. It becomes John’s signature crime-solving jumper, iconic as Sherlock’s scarf or (the recently-turned Mrs. Lestrade) Molly’s lab coat.

By the age of eighty, Sherlock’s knitted nearly a hundred jumpers for John. He’s far too old for what he used to do, but he makes up for it by volunteering at the community center in an “almost-human move,” as his husband teases him. Ten-year-olds to thirty-year-olds come to learn, and they watch with fascination as Sherlock’s hands work the yarn with the steady certainty of a factory machine. The children especially love to hear of stories of the crime-fighting days, and they all decide to knit for John with the help of the adults.

John receives a steady supply of jumpers in the mail during the time Sherlock works at the community center.

The last jumper Sherlock knits in his life is a grayish color to match John’s eyes. John wears it to the funeral and all the way home, silently remembering those two years Sherlock had been dead. He would have waited two years again, or however long it would take for Sherlock to come back. But Sherlock wasn’t coming back. Not this time.

John is staring blankly at the violin resting in the corner when he reaches up to stroke his collar in a familiar gesture of Sherlock’s. He feels the ribbing, but against it, a curly pattern disrupts the fluid stitches, and John pulls his collar out to look. Embroidered there in neat, small cursive are the words John’s heard and said so many times in his life. He whispers them aloud like an incantation, whispers them as he falls asleep, whispers them every night for the rest of his life.

I love you.

**Author's Note:**

> sorry


End file.
